


everyone knows the war is over

by moonsandstar_s



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, ohohohohoh v8 is coming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:55:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27270796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonsandstar_s/pseuds/moonsandstar_s
Summary: The war isn't approaching. It's here, and our heroes are drastically unprepared.Yang, surrounded by the silence of her defeated friends, stares out the airship window at the boiling black sky, the unbeatable enemy riding at the helm of its hell, and wonders why she's always having to say goodbye to those she loves.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 6
Kudos: 116





	everyone knows the war is over

**Author's Note:**

> i literally wrote this in two hours oops it's self-indulgent but what can ya do? brownie points to those who spot all the lines from the v8 trailer! 
> 
> V8 BEES COME THRU

“We’re _ screwed, _ ” Jaune breathes.    
  
Yang’s staring out at the boiling, stormy horizon on his right-hand side and can’t help but agree. She thinks now, _ right now _ , would be the best time for some sort of earth-shattering revelation—some daring, adrenaline-concocted plan to miraculously save their asses and save the day—but all she can summon is the thought of  _ holy shit.  _ _  
_ _  
_ It’s a hurricane. It’s Grimm, really, a pulsating, throbbing cloud of red and black, like a rotted heart, and nausea swells in her gut at the sight. There’s no beating that. There’s only weathering it and hoping not to die. Grimly, she watches their hopes of a happily ever after go swirling down the drain before turning away from the window—some problems are better left for later—to face her team.    
  
The airship is crowded, but utterly silent, save for the whirring of the engine. Defeat is thick on the air. It takes form in the place of Oscar’s absence, the bitter look on Ren’s face. Left with nothing else to do, Yang quickly headcounts everyone onboard: Blake, quietly steady at her side. Weiss and Ruby, flanking Penny on both sides of the ship’s bench. In the cockpit, Pietro and Maria, quietly conversing, their words lost in the distant popping of gunfire and the rumbling roar of the engines. Jaune and his team, crouched near the windows, looking strained. Still noticeably absent: Oscar. Also absent: the presence of any hope.    
  
This isn’t how the stories go. They’re losing.    
  
Everyone looks worse for the wear. Weiss is trying and failing to hide how she’s on the verge of tears, and Ren’s eyes are bloodshot. Penny’s face is usually an open book, but right now, Yang can’t imagine what she’s feeling. Yet Nora is the first the one to break the deadly silence. “So… what do we do now?”    
  
From the cockpit, Maria answers, her tone drenched in irony. “Well, considering our options are between certain death and certain death…”    
  
“Hold up,” Yang interrupts, cutting off that conversation before it can get started. “In the limited time we have before we get swallowed up by Moby Dick in the sky over there, let’s run it back.” She levels a finger in Jaune’s direction. “First, what happened to Oscar? Why wasn’t he with you?”    
  
Jaune looks up through the dirtied gaps in his sweat-and-bloodstreaked hair, wretchedness etched in every line on his face. “He said that there was something he had to do alone, and he ran off before we could stop him.”    
  
Ruby, from her spot on the bench, makes a small, pained noise. “And… and what about the relic?”    
  
_ “Stolen.” _ The word sounds dragged out of Jaune, his misery only becoming more pronounced. “By someone that disguised themselves as… as members of our team. And then ran off with it. We couldn’t give pursuit; Atlas soldiers were firing point-blank at us and we...” He bows his head. “It’s my fault that we lost it. If I’d just been a little more—”    


Ruby shakes her head impatiently. “Stop that. It’s not your fault. What else could you have done?” A frown creases her forehead. “You said it was someone who disguised themselves…”    
  
“And made physical illusions,” Nora chimes in. “When Oscar grabbed her after she snatched the lamp, she broke into a thousand little pieces and completely vanished. There was  _ no  _ way we could’ve recovered the relic after that.”   


“But that sounds like…” Yang murmurs, half to herself, before she looks up to find her team all gazing at her somberly. She’s reminded of a brutal fight on a bridge, steam and rosepetals swirling through the night, the broken moon bright above them, all of what feels like eternity ago.   
  
“Neo,” Ruby finishes. “She used to work for Torchwick. I’m guessing she’s allied herself with Cinder now.”    
  
“And by extension, Salem,” Jaune mumbles. “So she’s got one of the relics. Really great.  _ Just  _ fantastic.”

“As if our luck today couldn’t get any better,” Blake adds softly, frustration glimmering in her eyes.    
  
“We can’t worry about that now,” Ruby chides him gently, “when we’ve got  _ that  _ on our hands.” She points out the window at the pitch-black sky. “Let’s focus. We’ve got two tasks that are the most important for us right now—”    
  
“So let’s go for both,” Jaune suggests, standing up, shaking his head slightly, as if to clear it. “We’ll get Amity up and running, and evacuate Mantle.” 

“How can we possibly accomplish both?” Weiss speaks up hoarsely, the words derisive but her tone hollow. “In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s only ten of us here, and that’s an entire settlement that needs evacuating. And, no offense, Maria and Pietro, but I don’t think you guys can be much help with that.”    
  
“None taken,” Maria grumbles, muttering something under her breath about privileged kids. 

“They’ll still be a big help. Here’s what we are going to do.” Ruby’s expression is featureless and cold as the tundra far below them. “Atlas is only Salem’s current target. Once she’s done here, she’ll move on to the rest of Remnant. A victory here means more than stopping her—it means proving that she’s capable of failure, capable of being set back. I don’t care what the Ace Ops said about losing battles in order to win wars; we  _ can’t  _ lose this battle.  _ This  _ is what matters.” 

“You’re right,” Blake murmurs, her amber eyes anxious. Yang notices that her ears are pinned flat against her skull. “This isn’t a chess game of war strategy. These are human _ lives  _ at stake that we’re talking about.”    
  
“Plus, there are people here who need us right now,” Ren points out, a stormy expression crossing his face. “We  _ can’t _ let the Grimm destroy this town.”  
  
“We need to warn them! Warn them about Salem, tell them what’s truly going on. We have no hope of uniting anyone without that.” Ruby exhales heavily before closing her eyes, as if pulling herself together. “So… I think we’re going to have to split up.”    
  
“Split up?” Blake echoes, looking sidelong at Yang, all of Yang’s uneasiness reflected in her own expression. They don’t need to speak out loud to exchange their identical misgivings. Yang forces down memories of months spent staring dead-eyed out a window, the ache of a missing half, and addresses her sister. She doesn’t want to leave any of them any more than Blake does. 

“Ruby, splitting up in horror movies usually means that someone dies.” She tries to stay calm. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea to—”   
  
“Yang, I love you,” Ruby says calmly, “and I don’t want to split up, either, but this could be our one shot to save a whole kingdom and reunite the world. I’m not going to throw that away.”   
  
“But—”   
  
Ruby’s eyes flash dangerously, sparking silver. “I’m not asking. I’m not _ suggesting _ we split up. We  _ are _ going to get both these things done. We have to save Mantle. We have to get that tower working,  _ now.  _ As your team leader, that’s an order. I’m pulling rank, or asserting authority, or however you formally say this kind of thing, but we’re evacuating that city and we’re getting that tower up and running! Got it?”    
  
The airship echoes with silence in the wake of her outburst, but nobody moves to protest. Ruby stares fiercely around at the rest of them before summoning another deep breath. “Okay. So here’s what’s gonna happen.”    
  
She turns to face Jaune, who meets her gaze solemnly. “Jaune, I want you, Ren, and Yang to go down to Mantle. Start evacuation. You’ve got experience in herding scared people together.”    
  
She glances over her shoulder at Yang, who crosses her arms mutinously, keeping quiet. “Yang, you'll be in charge down there. I know you can persuade anyone to listen to you when you really mean it. That’s where you’ll come in. For those who aren’t willing to listen, you’ll be there, telling them what’s really at stake—the danger they’ll be in—if they try to stay behind.”    
  
“I guess,” Yang mutters. 

Ruby nods, biting her lip anxiously, before finally turning to Ren, who still looks like he’s on the brink of having a breakdown. “Ren, your job, with Jaune’s help, is to try and keep everyone—if not calm, then at least mask their emotions. There’s already enough Grimm down there as it is. Get as many people as you possibly can to safety, and tell the rest about what’s happening, who’s coming.” She takes a deep, shaky breath. “And… while you’re down there, I need you all to keep an eye out for Qrow. _ And  _ for Robyn. We have no idea where they went.” 

Jaune and Ren pause for a moment, absorbing their orders, before they each straighten their shoulders and nod their assent at her.    
  
“Blake,” Ruby continues, “that leaves you, me, Weiss, Pietro, Penny, and Nora to go to Amity. You'll be our lookout. Weiss and Nora will be our defense. Pietro and Penny will be our brains. And me... I'll be the glue. So to speak." She marches past all of them, towards the cockpit of the airship, the click of her boots sharp in the stillness. “Maria? Can you bring us down to the edge of Mantle, the side facing the tundra where they were working on Amity? Hopefully without catching the attention of Atlas, since we’re all technically law-breaking fugitives right now?” 

“Not my first time being a criminal,” Blake mutters, eliciting a snort from Yang.

Up in the cockpit, Maria cackles. “This isn’t my first rodeo, dear. I’m already on my way there.” She smacks a button on the dashboard and grunts, annoyed. Over the airship, something whistles menacingly before exploding a ball of fire against a howling Teryx. “Just trying to avoid the small fleet of soulless hellhounds in the sky, that’s all.”    
  
It seems like no time at all has passed before they touch down lightly on the edge of Mantle, where the snow is broken up by cobblestones and hardy tundra grass. At the airship’s exit, Jaune and Ren are exchanging rapid-fire whispers, while Nora glances worriedly back and forth between the two of them.    
  
Ruby comes up to her side. “Yang,” she says, looking slightly sheepish now that the tension has fizzled out of the space between all of them, “I’m sorry for splitting us up. I’m just trying to do what I think is best. And what’s right. I just—I just want to be able to save these people but I’m running out of options.” 

Yang looks down at her little sister. “I know,” she says lowly. “I just hate the idea of being separate from you guys after everything. And not being able to be there if something goes wrong. It’s hard to be focused on saving these people when I’m constantly going to be worried about if you all are safe.”    
  
“I know.” Ruby casts her gaze downward, looking upset, as if she’s already envisioning the heavy burden that lies ahead for her—for all of them. “This isn’t something I’m thrilled about either, trust me.”    
  
“Just—” Yang runs a shaky hand through her hair and blows out a heavy breath. “Get Amity going. Stay with the others.  _ Promise  _ me when you aren’t going to do anything stupidly noble and reckless.” 

Ruby sniffs out a laugh through impending tears as she crushes Yang close to her. “Hypocrite.”    
  
“Hero-complex.” Yang presses a kiss to the crown of Ruby’s head. “I mean it. Do what you have to do. But don’t forget about us.”    
  
When she pulls away and they share a final exchanged glance, Ruby’s silver eyes are so much like Summer’s— that tenderness, that fierce desire, that belief in her own willpower to make what needs to happen, happen—Yang nearly crumbles.    
  
“I love you,” she says fiercely.    
  
Ruby smiles, a touch of sadness coloring it. “I love you. Good luck down there. Go kick some Grimm butt for us.”    
  
“Wouldn’t dream of doing anything else.” Yang returns the smile as Ruby turns away, walking back towards Weiss and Penny, where she begins to murmur the outlines of some other grand plan. Yang’s heart swells in her chest, a painful mixture of anxiety and pride, the faith she has in her sister tempered by her hatred of the fact that any of them have had to come to these sort of decisions in the first place. Where was the warning label for this kind of sacrifice when she stepped onto that Beacon-bound airship all those months ago?    
  
“Yang,” Jaune calls from the airship door, tearing her from her reverie. Having said their wishes of good luck and temporary goodbyes to Nora and the others, he and Ren are leaning, palms flat, against the metal, looking expectant. “You ready to head out?”   
  
This is the part that’s going to hurt the worst, and Yang knows it. She is all-too-aware of Blake’s sad eyes resting on her, like an extension of her own consciousness. She flips up a hand in Jaune’s direction, pausing him. “Yeah, hang on a second.” 

Blake is closed-off—arms folded, ears flat, one foot tapping against the floor, but when she meets Yang’s eyes, they’re full of trepidation, of unspoken questions, but mostly, full of fear. Yang doesn’t even think; she opens her arms, and Blake goes into them, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

For a moment, they’re suspended: the airship humming around them, the subdued murmur of their friends, the distant grumble of that menacing storm of Grimm. A cold wind whips through the ship from the open door, and Blake almost unthinkingly huddles closer, her breaths shaky. Yang palms Blake’s spine, the little notches of vertebrae there, and presses her lips against the flyaway baby hairs on her temple, breathing in that soft scent that’s uniquely Blake. It’s been tamped down under the snow and sweat that’s narrated their journey here, but it’s still there—lemongrass and jasmine, the familiarity of it slowing Yang’s frantic heartbeat. 

In the brief span of that quiet moment, in the split-second darkness between the blink of an eye, a torrent of memories comes deluging down on Yang: a delicate black dress in a loud ballroom, broken glass and reflected fire in the cafeteria, a bottlecap on the seashore, a shocked voice saying her name through a gap in Haven’s wall, a whistling shriek in the wells beneath the abandoned farm, slick waterfall spray sliding against her hands, which shudder with the thumping grind of metal against bone, blood on her hands, blood on Blake’s hand, blood on them both. All these memories, narrated with one common factor: those amber eyes.    
  
There was a time Yang had thought she’d never see them again. 

“Yang,” Blake gets out against the fabric of her shirt. “I don’t like any of this.” 

“I know,” Yang says. “Me, either.”    
  
Blake blows out a long, shuddering breath. “Please, just—please be safe.”  
  
“Only if you promise to do the same.” Yang pulls away a little and reaches out, fingers light under Blake’s chin, can’t help her eyes from flitting down to where Blake’s tongue wets her lips, a reaction of stress, more than anything. “Promise?”    
  
Those broken and reforged promises, between them. The weight is obvious, at least to Yang, but she thinks it must be obvious to Blake, too, because she squares her shoulders and looks up firmly. “I swear.”    
  
The goodbye is unpracticed and so it’s awkward, uncertain. Yang shuffles, not wanting to be the first to break away, but painfully conscious, too, of Jaune and Ren’s waiting eyes on her back. Blake glances over Yang’s shoulder, sees them waiting there, and lets out a small sigh. “Okay. I—okay. I’d better let you go and save the day for those citizens. Bye.”    
  
Yang stiffens as Blake goes up on her tiptoes and presses her lips, cool and chapped, against the space between her brows. “Be careful,” she whispers again, warm breath against Yang’s skin.  
  
Yang meets her eyes as Blake drops back down on her feet, and mentally says  _ fuck it,  _ because if this isn’t a do-or-die moment, she doesn’t know what is. “That the only goodbye I get in the face of imminent death?”    
  
Blake raises an eyebrow, the tiniest of smiles flitting across her lips. “What other kind would you prefer, then?”    
  
In answer, Yang kisses her.    
  
Blake makes a muffled, surprised noise against her mouth before she relaxes into it, her fingertips a butterfly’s touch on Yang’s waist. It’s a brief kiss: Yang’s tongue plays over the seam of Blake’s mouth, soft as sunlight. Blake’s fingers tighten; she tastes of salt, of something slightly sweet, and Yang feels dizzy when she breaks away a second later.    
  
“The good kind,” Yang answers, smug as she swipes her thumb across her bottom lip. Blake looks frazzled. “Now go get that tower up and running. And I’ll try not to get trampled out here on the ground.”   
  
She turns to go, the icy wind fiercer now where it comes through the door, bringing snow and sleet whispering across the metal floor. Nobody seems to have noticed them, except for Jaune, who shakes himself from his brooding stare out at the frozen wasteland long enough to give her a goofy smile and a double-thumbs-up, before pointing at a nonexistent watch on his wrist. As she makes to head towards him, she’s stopped by Blake’s index finger and thumb trapping her softly by the wrist. “Yang,” she whispers. “I love you. You do know that, right?”    
  
Past the tundra, a Beowolf gives a long, mournful howl. In the midst of the hell overhead and the impossible waiting for them out there across the snow and ice, Yang’s heart beats quicker, and she swears she feels sunlight in her veins. “It was obvious from the way you stare at me whenever you think my attention’s somewhere else,” she teases.    
  
Blake drops her wrist and feigns shock. “I do not  _ stare.”  _ _  
  
_ “I love you,” Yang says softly. “In case you didn’t know, too.”    
  
Blake’s eyes shine like the sun, brighter, even, standing in for a sun that’s been swallowed up by the black skies waiting out there for them. She doesn’t say anything, but Yang kind of thinks she can read every unspoken word glittering there. She gives Blake a small smile before she turns, jogging the length of the airship to join her waiting friends, thinking, for that moment, even though they might all be dead within the hour, everything she’s risked, every moment lost and miserable day passed, everything has all already been worth it. 

“Alright,” she says to Jaune. “Let’s go save these people’s asses!”    
  
She braces her hands on the airship’s sides, steels herself, and jumps out into the snow. 


End file.
